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There was this photographer in the 1850′s who took photographs during a war in Europe. There was a spot on a road the Russians were bombing with cannonballs. They bombed it so heavily that it was referred to as the Valley of the Shadow of Death. This photographer took two photographs of this road.

In one photograph, there are cannonballs all over the place, littered all over the road. In the other photograph, the road is clear, and all the cannonballs are lying in a ditch alongside the road.

So the question becomes, which photo was taken first? Most people assume the photo of the cleared road was done first, but the photographer didn’t think it was dramatic enough, so he scattered the cannonballs over the road to make it more dramatic, and took the other picture.

There’s a really interesting article about it here. You can view the photographs there as well.

I’ve been riding my bike around and stopping to take pictures if I see anything interesting. There’s really not too much that is interesting about the sidewalks of Huntington Beach. There are a lot of abandoned shopping carts on sidewalks, though. Sometimes they’re in a position that makes me think of them as having some sort of attitude or behavior. Like these two, they look like they’re racing each other around the bend:

Often, though, the shopping carts are just in a bad position for me to get a good picture of them. Either the lighting is wrong (they’re in the shade next to a sunny area), or they’re just in a boring spot. It occurred to me as I rode past one the other day that I could always move them into a more interesting position. But the whole idea of it seemed wrong. I don’t like posing shots. Which is one reason I don’t like photographing people unless they’re already doing something interesting (ie, performing on a stage).

So my inclination is to believe that the cannonball photographer didn’t set up the photo of the scattered cannonballs. It makes just as much sense to me that when he got there, the cannonballs were all over the road, and after taking a picture of it, he moved them off the road and took another. Because you know, he had to use the road.

Oh, and the author of that article about the photographer? It’s Errol Morris, a guy who’s made some great documentaries, including one I need to do a post about called Gates of Heaven.

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